It is helpful to step back mid-season and check in on your bird dog’s performance. As the season progresses, we can all get “kennel blind” and miss the little changes that have taken place in our dogs since the opener. Many a dog has started out the hunting season steady to wing and shot but has ended the season breaking on the flush. Erosion in a dog’s performance often happens while hunters and handlers focus on hunting and lose a bit of that training attention to detail.

During the hunt, it’s easy to focus on conversations with friends, the beautiful landscape you’ve immersed yourself in, or making a shot on a flushing bird. With all these distractions, you may not always notice when you miss a chance to handle your dog. Taking a step away from hunting and spending an outing or two focused on your dog’sperformance and mindset can help make the second half of the season much more productive and enjoyable. But this mid-season checkup may require you to leave the shotgun at home, or ask a buddy to do the shooting while you focus on the dog. This small sacrifice will pay dividends in the long run.

Once you have paused, refocused, and done this evaluation of your dog, take stock of any potential issues your doghas encountered. Ask yourself, “Why?” What could be the reason your dog is exhibiting undesirable behaviors? Often, you can trace behavioral changes back to recent experiences or shifts in mindset. Whatever bumps in the road your dog encounters have residual effects, and the snowball effect can impact their overall performance. The more days that go by before an unwanted behavior is corrected, the more habitualthe negative behavior becomes. Tracing issues back to their roots helps simplify the path to correcting them, while also illuminating how to prevent those same issues from re-occurring. If a dog has a solid understanding of his prior training, desired behaviors can usually be reinstated in a short time.

The most common issues revealed during that mid-season evaluation are: loss of steadiness, pattern or handling issues, and a loss of focus on finding birds. Here are some common causes of these issues and suggestions of how to get a dog back on track.

Loss of Steadiness for Pointing Dogs

There are two common missteps that tend to erode a dog’s steadiness over the season: running with dogs that are less steady or running with dogs that will not honor your dog’s point. If a dog on point has another dog run past him, either to flush a bird or to steal the point, it is tempting for that dog to move forward, as well. This instigates a loss of steadiness and often shifts that dog into more of a flushing mindset.

Another reason why dogs may lose steadiness mid-season is exposure to poor-flying birds. When birds are slow to get up and out, or when they hop and don’t flush hard, the temptation to break and try to catch the bird is often more than a dog can withstand. Poor-flying birds are harder for dogs to stand steady through and can quickly shift the dog into a flushing and catching mindset.

If you have a good handle on your dog and can stop him in the field, you may be able to clean a lack of steadiness up during hunts simply by being ready to make timely corrections. Stop your dog at the moment of the infraction. This requires you to keep a watchful eye on your dog, so you will have to make shooting a secondary concern. If you are not able to clean this up in a few outings in a hunting scenario, go back to the more controlled environment of the training field and work on steadiness for a few workouts before your next hunt.

Fixing a Hunting Dog's Pattern and Handling

After logging a lot of early season hours in the field, it is easy for any of us to slip into a rut where we don’t catch behaviors quickly. Sometimes, this may be pretty easy to catch when doing a mid-season checkup as you see your dog run off to the front and out of range and suddenly realize he has done that consistently most of the season. Sometimes it may be a little more subtle, such as a dog that keeps periodicallyshowing up from behind, when we didn’t quite notice when he first made that backward cast. Keeping a watchful eye on your dog’s pattern at all times helps ensure you can correct when you need to and can prevent unwanted behavior from becoming habitual. Increasing the direction changes you are doing and getting a dog in a “go with you” mindset can help your dog regain the front pattern. Also, handling a dogwhile he is still ahead of you can preempt that backward cast before it ever occurs.

Dogs that are hunting tough vegetation may begin to lose focus and hunt on the road or the clear path, as it is the easiest path to travel. This easily travelled path is also typically the path least likely to present the dog with bird contacts. If you see your dog slip out of the vegetation to run down the road, you can give your dog a new front by simply heading off the road yourself. Your dog should naturally turn to go with you. There have been many hunts where we have had to intentionally avoid roads to walk through thicker cover, casting our dogs toward areas more likely to contain birds. Doing so helps a dog learn the objectives to cover and keeps him from reverting to running down the road.

Refocusing a Bird Dog on Finding Birds

It’s common for dogs to go through slumps during a hunting season in which they just don’t find many birds. The most common reason for this drop-off is simply lack of focus.

Even the best dogs can lose focus when hunting wild birds in unfavorable conditions. It could be weather that makes it hard for dogs to locate birds, or it could be that you as a handler have put your dog down in a hunting area where numbers are limited. In either case, the dog goes through a long period with little or no bird contact. In the absence of birds, dogs that love to run can begin running more than hunting, passing up traces of scent that they might have followed up otherwise. Other dogs may revert to “trashing,” hunting mice, or tweety birds.

Often, these dogs, particularly the more experienced dogs, can get re-focused on finding game by having an outing or two that provides easy bird contacts. Trips to the local preserve may be just what a dog needs to regain focus and that seemingly superhero ability to locate game. Younger or less experienced dogs are more prone to losing focus, and regularly need to be given more consistent opportunities to find birds than a seasoned dog.

If you are running a young dog with an older, more proficient bird finder, it is a good ideato keep track of the ratio of points to backs. If a dog backs significantly more than he points, it might be necessary to run him by himself to give him the opportunity to use his nose and find his own birds. Doing sohelps refocus that dog on game and continues developing his scent working skills. A dog that consistently finds himself in a backing situation can begin looking for backing situations more than actively pursuing game. These are often younger dogs that have a subservient mindset. As a result, the young dog doesn’t get the opportunity to develop into a strong bird finder. This becomes more apparent when that old birddog is gone, and the younger one doesn’t have the bird finding experience to fill his shoes. When we pair dogs for a hunt, our goal is to match dogs that will have close to equal ability and experience in finding birds.

Even if your dog’s performance is solid mid-season, and there is no blatant issue to work on, it’s a good idea to go back to a controlled environment and give your dog a refresher on the basics of the Three Core Behaviors (whoa, here, and heel). With the exceptions of loss of focus and lack of timely handling, a majority of problems in the hunting field can be traced back to some issue in basic obedience and understanding of cues.

So, in short, mid-season is a great time to evaluate your dog and address any issues. With the mid-season checkup, you and your dog can course correct as needed, ensuring a moresuccessful, and educational, second half of the season.